BATON ROUGE — LSU’s Pete Maravich Assembly Center will play host to the New Orleans Hornets for six regular season games and one exhibition game during the 2005-06 season, it was announced Wednesday.

The slate will begin with an exhibition game on October 25 featuring the Hornets against the Miami Heat and former Tiger great Shaquille O’Neal.

“We are pleased that we have been able to utilize the valuable resources of our university to again assist an important entity in our state in the wake of Hurricane Katrina,” said LSU athletics director Skip Bertman. “We felt it was important to help the Hornets maintain a presence in Louisiana if we could do so without interfering with the normal course of business at the University, and we were able to accomplish those goals.”

The games scheduled for Baton Rouge are December 16 against Phoenix, January 13 against Sacramento, January 18 against Memphis, March 8 against the Los Angeles Lakers, March 18 against Denver and March 21 against the Los Angeles Clippers.

Details on the agreement and information on ticket sales will be announced at a later date.

The Hornets also announced on Wednesday that it would play 35 homes games in Oklahoma City during the coming season as New Orleans recovers from Hurricane Katrina.